This was a game I was very excited for when I first heard about. Being slightly avid towards the LOTR trilogy I was very excited at the prospect of being able to relive the battles I saw on the films and hopefully be able to immerse myself in hours upon hours of gameplay like I did with the film tie in games which were excellent.Problem is I've become a gamerscore whore, meaning I rarely play games to their full potential unless the achievements tell me to do so. Although playing through both the Good and Bad campaigns was enjoyable it was incredibly quick and didn't have much depth. I can see how many people may be very disappointed with the game as it fails to live up to the hype surrounding it however if your in need of a quick burst of gamerscore then this game should tickle your fancy without boring you too much. The achievements aren't terrible as you need to ensure you do feats such as backstab 10 enemies as a scout and storyline specific ones such as defeating the Witch King with Eowyn but other than that you just need to play through the campaign and then spend an hour or two doing some pointless boosting online. Finally a few achievements are rather dumb to have to bother to get instead of skill, the main culprit being the achievement which involves you having to kill 300 hobbits which took me 15 minutes or so and was boring.
Final Verdict: - Although the game is really quick and pretty repetitive it does spice it up enough for you to be able to play through the 6-8 hour campaign and enjoy yourself at the same time as you rack up easy gamerscore. It doesn't quite have the spark that Return of the King had when I played on my PS2 but it's given me a quick 1000 gamerscore and has met my need of a little bit of fun from Middle Earth.
